YMMV / Power Rangers Mystic Force

• Adaptational Attractiveness: Inverted with the portly Daggeron filling the role of the bishonen Hikaru... leading to Daggeron mysteriously losing fifty pounds when he morphed.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: In "Stranger Within: Part 2," Leelee awkwardly leaves after Vida claims she hadn't really been turned into a vampire earlier but was playing a prank. Was Leelee acting scared to maintain her cover, or, as The Mole, did she feel guilty about her role in that?
• Awesome Music:
  • The fantasy style background music is pretty damn cool.
  • The theme song itself, while not the best, has some sweet violins one can hear during the credits (Or during Xander's fight during "Once A Ranger").
  • And, as well, Ron Wasserman's two submitted theme songs, in particular the Rock Mix.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Nick. Either an OK Red who has issues with confronting problems (Namely, fans criticize that Nick runs away from all of his problems and frequently gives up), or an unlikable "chosen one" character who gets undue focus at the expense of the other Rangers.
  • Koragg. Either a legitimately interesting villain, a Token Good Teammate, or a poor man's Villamax, whose honor does not work as he works with evil forces with no shades of grey?
  • While Xander and Chip are more popular, several fans have pointed out how they have Aesop Amnesia. Whether the differing contexts provide enough justification for this is a fairly big bone of contention.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Piggy's appearance is a textbook example.
• Broken Aesop: The lesson in the three-parter "Dark Wish" is supposed to be "don't take shortcuts, do the work you're supposed to", demonstrated by having the Rangers try to wish away the bad guys through the resident genie and having it backfire horribly. This is undermined by A) the Rangers have been encouraged all season to embrace their magical gifts, so "don't cheat with magic" rings hollow, B) the bad guys get the chance to use the genie themselves, and their wish to depower the Rangers is completely successful, and C) the Rangers' reward for learning not to use magic is even stronger magic that fuels their Super Mode.
  • Oh, and remember that for all of Part 1, Daggeron had been going out of his way to essentially pester the Rangers into puling Heroic Second Wind via said Broken Aesop; which is very hard to do when they can barely lift their weapons against enemies that have them directly cornered, and are showing severe damage on their end. Using Jenji suddenly sounds a lot less like a cop-out, doesn't it?
  • Plus, the Rangers were tossed around like rag-dolls against two enemies that Daggeron was well aware of (he repeatedly claims to "know these beasts"), and didn't clue the Rangers in on (a scene with him and Udonna in Part 1 implies that telling them was the plan, but it never happened), which may have made the battles the Rangers were already being weakened by a little easier. But because they fell for the enemy's trap, it's automatically their fault?
  • A second one is when Itassis asks why the Rangers continuously defeat the Terrors despite the latter's greater power. The answer she gets is "Courage". But what they mean is actually caring about each other, not being brave. This makes sense, but due to the phrasing it leads a lot of confusion.
• Broken Base: The theme song which people either find it to be okay, or hate the hip-hop like direction it took.
• Complete Monster: Octomus the Master is the eldritch leader of the Underworld responsible for the orchestration of the Great War between his forces and the magic lands before being sealed away, also twisting the warrior Leanbow into his soldier Koragg. To escape his prison, Octomus uses one of his followers who tries to repent as his vessel and kills him by bursting out of his living body to escape. Unleashed at last, Octomus brainwashes the Red Ranger Nick Russell and has him lay waste to the village of Rootcore while also having Sculpin and Black Lance attack the city of Briarwood. During the carnage, Octomus lays siege to the Mystic Mother's palace, also killing Leanbow and Daggeron and dropping their bodies in front of the Rangers with sadistic glee. Octomus then warps the Rangers to the future he creates, with all life extinguished and the universe left as a desolate husk. Motivated only by making innocent beings suffer, Octomus's depravities make him one of the worst in the franchise while being one the most personal.
• Crossover Ship: While not a romantic one (most of the time) Chip and Dustin from ''Ninja Storm'' are commonly best friends in fandom due to being the nerd of their teams and for being the only two Earth male yellow Rangers in the franchise until over a decade later (Which is commonly lampshaded during fanfics).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Xander. Maybe it's the accent, maybe it's the wannabe Loveable Rogue vibe his smarminess gives off, maybe it's just the color green. When Operation Overdrive had a multi-season team-up episode instead of a full two-team crossover, Xander was the one brought in from Mystic Force.
  • Chip, while less popular, still has a notable fanbase, primarily due to being one of the few yellow Western Rangers who's a guy (Super Sentai has had plenty of yellow males before, but Saban commonly adapts them as women for gender balancing purposes). His boundless enthusiasm, particularly at getting the chance to become a Power Ranger, is also a notable characteristic that helps him stand out from others in the series.
  • Vida's Tomboy persona, Big Sister Instinct, and the butterfly wings on her costume make her a delightfully unique Pink Ranger whom fans adore.
  • The trio of Clare, Leelee and Phineas, particularly due to their team-up in "Light Source". Linkara even noted that they had more effective Character Development than the majority of the Rangers themselves.
  • Istassis and Matoombo, the two Ten Terrors who turn good, are well-liked for some interesting Character Development. The Ten Terrors in general are better liked than most of the season's other villains due to having well-defined personalities, good fighting skills, and (in some cases) cool designs.
• Evil Is Cool: The Master might be one of the most flat-out horrifying-looking villains in Power Rangers history, if not the absolute scariest. There aren't many villains who actually look scarier as a humanoid than as a giant Lovecraftian octopus-creature.
• Fanfic Fuel: The previous war against The Master and his forces is only featured in a few short flashbacks but can invite a lot of speculation about what Udonna, her sister, Leanbow and his oddly MIA fellow Mystic Wizards, Jenji, Daggeron, and their friends were up to.
• Genius Bonus: The Manticore Megazord is based on an obscure mythological beast with the body of a lion, a human face, bat wings, and a scorpion tail. The Megazord is lion-based for the most part, but cheating with being part-firebird, has a human-like face like all megazords, grows wings of fire before using it's finishing move, but no tail.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Read "Les Yay" one trope down. Then remember that earlier two-parter where Necrolai sired Vida as a vampire.
  • And early on in "Rock Solid", Nick accused Madison of hiding behind her camera, which in a sense would become a recurring problem for her.
  • In contrast to the above, the fact that Nick pretty much owned the series means something different now that another Nick has acquired the franchise.
  • Speaking of the other Nick, it's funnier to see Vida get hit with green slime in "Petrified Xander" considering it's the network's trademark.
  • Daggeron says he will train Chip as a knight. In Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, Chip's actor voiced the Sentinel Knight.
  • For the Japanese dub, Haruka Tomatsu voices Madison, the Blue Ranger. A year after the dub's release, she would voice a character closely associated re: Ship Tease with its Blue Ranger.
  • Although this series was the second that was a joint production between Toei and Disney (the first being its source material), it was frequently compared to Harry Potter, which is not a Disney property. Six years later, Toei wound up releasing a Sentai whose theme was comparable to a Disney property...Pirates of the Caribbean
• Iron Woobie: Udonna. Her husband is presumed dead, his companions are most likely dead, Niella is dead, Daggeron and Calindor are missing, and all she can hope is that Bowen is taken somewhere safe and sound. Yet she remains strong.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A large amount of complaints about this series are about just how similar it is to Magiranger. While it's not as much of a direct copy as, oh say, Samurai, there's a lot of elements that make it hard to not view it as essentially a dub of Magiranger - for starters, this was the first series since Zeo not to change any of the villains^note unless you count the fact that Necrolai cannot split herself in two different characters (previous seasons had either changed details, added an original villain, or removed an antagonist), the family subplot, while not present from the start, was still there, and was much more obvious, and much like with it's source material, the red ranger has a lot of focus.
• Jerkass Woobie: Leelee. While she originally sided with the villains, and only switched sides out of boredom, the fact that she was serious about her Heel–Face Turn still made it unfortunate that the rangers still wouldn't trust her.
• Les Yay: In the finale, the Rangers see Necrolai as a human, and Vida enthusiastically backs up Xander's assessment that she's hot. Of course, this makes the two-parter where Necrolai sired Vida as a vampire Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • There's also some between Leelee and Clare.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Badass: Xander. He even has his own Chuck Norris facts list.
• Memetic Mutation: "Who's Madison?" A common complaint is that Nick's bike got more focus than she did.
• Mis-blamed: It might become 'Mys-Nick Force' in the final arc, but there's a large chunk of episodes (sixteen or so) in the middle of the series that focus on everyone but Nick. Yes, even Madison.
  • Also, the reason for Nick getting so much focus? The Red Ranger had more stock footage than any of the other rangers.
• Moe:
  • Chip, due to his humorous Fun Personified and Ascended Fanboy characteristics, and how they don't stop him from being a Knight in Shining Armor.
  • Vida, due to her enthusiasm about old records, Big Sister Instinct, constantly re-dyed skunk stripe, and the way she initially hates pink but warms to the color after becoming the Pink Ranger.
  • Madison can be quite adorable, due to her dazzling smile, caring nature, initial Shrinking Violet characterization, and Eek, a Mouse!! reaction to seeing a frog that gets overcome once the frog saves her life.
  • Clare, due to her Cute Clumsy Girl comic relief moments and eager desire to help out the heroes.
• Narm: The Solar Streak Megazord's first appearance is somewhat undercut by the silly "choo-choo train" music playing during it. Witness for yourselves.
• Older Than They Think: Contrary to popular belief, Delphine is actually the first Ranger to be played by an actress of Arab origins (her actress is of Syrian-Scottish descent), making Nick (who's actor is of Australian-Lebanese descent) to be the second Ranger played by an Arab actor.
  • On a side note, series creator, Haim Saban, is of Egyptian-Jewish background with a rather big influence on the Arab world.
• One-Scene Wonder: Magma, the first of the Ten Terrors, has less than ten minutes of screen-time, but his Playing with Fire Rock Monster appearance and Near-Villain Victory (compete with him being a Graceful Loser) make him pretty memorable among the series villains.
• Questionable Casting: While most fans agreed it was a nice tribute to Machiko Soga to make Mystic Mother the reformed Rita Repulsa, a good number were also disappointed that Disney didn't ask Barbara Goodson to dub her again.
• So Okay, It's Average: While not as hated as its successor Operation Overdrive, it's also not as loved as its predecessor SPD. Kind of fitting it's between those seasons.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The other four rangers don't get much development because of Nick's importance to the plot.
  • If Disney gave them 38 episodes instead of 32, we would have gotten a proper introduction to the Mystic Mother (and maybe explain how Rita had gotten that position), who only showed up in the 2-part finale.
  • Nick's adoptive sister. He moved to town to live with her, but she never even appears onscreen.
  • The Ten Terrors have some interesting designs and personalities, but don't appear until the last nine episodes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: They didn't adapt several good parts of Magiranger such as episode 28 and the use of the Dial Rod Bowgun to destroy Oculous/Cyclops just to introduce the Battlizer and giving even more importance to Nick. Those examples would give Chip more deserved character development.
  • They could have shown how Phineas was treated by the goblins and trolls, following his part in the final battle.
  • Several fans felt that Piggy's cameo (a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment) could've led to a crossover with its predecessor SPD.
• Tough Act to Follow: Had to follow the well received Power Rangers S.P.D., which in itself followed the more well received Power Rangers: Dino Thunder.
• Ugly Cute: Phineas. He's a Troblin who is rather dirty in his appearance, but fans find him rather charming despite this. Also helps that he is genuinely a nice and helpful creature.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Nick. The gist of what happens to him: He was separated from his parents as a baby, drifting through random relatives in his adopted family, never had time to settle down and make friends, discovers his mother was the sorceress who mentored him in magic, learned his archenemy is his brainwashed father, and discovers it's his destiny to defeat the Master of the Underworld. If it were any other Red Ranger, this would work. Unfortunately, Nick is very unfriendly, brooding and is usually the first to just give up when things start to fall apart, and yet he's supposed to be the glue that holds the Rangers together. His cold response to Leelee, who was trying to reform, was so cruel that even the other Rangers, who didn't even like her, felt he went too far.
  • Although the whole team fell into this regarding Leelee in "The Hunter". Given her previous villainy and bitchiness, and the fact that she didn't seem to be wanting to reform for the right reasons, their distrust of her was completely justified... but in this episode, rather than just distrusting and avoiding her, they actively bully her and make her job more stressful than it needs to be. It's Played for Laughs, but Leelee's hurt reaction and the fact that nothing she had even done as a villain warranted this kind of deliberate mistreatment (although they may think she's done more) made it less funny that intended.
• Vindicated by History: This series does still have a number of detractors but a lot have also warmed up to the series who appreciate the magical elements, some dark aspects and story arcs.
  • The amount of fans for this series are very noticeable in WatchMojo's "Top 10 Power Rangers Series", where the majority of the comments section rioted when this series wasn't included or even mentioned on this list.

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